If you run a desktop machine that has no need to run services to anyone on the Internet, then you do NOT need any firewall on the machine. Just spend $50 or £50 on a NAT router (and probably have wireless thrown in to boot), make sure you use a private IP address behind the router and do not open up any port mappings.
I was reading a newspaper article recently (I think it was here in The Guardian here in the UK) where the author was making comparisons between the safety of kids today and in "The Good Old Days" by actually looking at statistical information. To summarise the article, it concluded that the number of child deaths on the road have dropped considerably and that the number of child murders or abuses had not changed over that whole period of time. It did conclude that kids were more at risk of being bullied by other kids nowadays. (Again, bear in mind these are UK-related stats.)
I'm not a parent but I've got two neices and a nephew who've been on the Internet for about ten years now (yeah, no jokes about "Isn't it time they went to bed then?") and who rely on their geek uncle to regularly clean/reinstall their PCs. Yep, I've never seen kids accumulate so many damned computer viruses on their PCs but I've been through browser histories, download directories and caches on their machines on several occasions and never seen anything that leads me to conclude they've ever been to "naughty" web sites or ever chatted online to anyone other than other kids. They're pretty much left to their own devices when it comes to Internet use with no parents looking over their shoulders. I'd have to conclude they're pretty sensible.
However, with the youngest nephew and niece just into their teen years, their parents are concerned if they go round to the local convenience store on their own because of the gangs of other kids who are invariably hanging around outside, threatening other kids and even some adults.
My view, therefore, is that this idea that there are gangs of cyberstalking paedophiles on the Internet is utter nonsense. It is a creation designed to instill fear in the general populace such that eventually the populace will expect governments to enforce Internet censorship and monitoring which is ultimately what those in control want.
During my childhood years, I had parents that taught me how to behave in the company of others and who'd give me a belt around the backside if I behaved wrongly to other kids or adults. I can also remember seeing local policemen walking the streets and police cars occasionally just driving around the area.
I wasn't stopped from going anywhere I liked, didn't have a mobile phone but got told what time I had to be home by. I can remember two occasions where me and some friends had to stand up to some kids who were out for a fight, otherwise we'd ignore abusive kids and just walk away.
So perhaps it's worthwhile thinking about the relevance of this Microsoft button - because it absolves the government of having to tell the truth to you, absolves all law enforcement officials of protecting you as a law-abiding citizen and absolves you of your responsibilities as a parent.
Programmers here in the US are making six-digit salaries; I don't know if they would be willing to give that up or go through the education again to design free software or innovate.
Why do you American programmers consistently bleat on about how you are *entitled* to continue earning big salaries for your work? I work for an American company here in the UK, I'm a consultant/support person who does a little programming and, yes, I'd like my job to be as secure as possible for as long as possible.
But if times change and what I do starts becoming less needed, then it's up to *me* to make some decisions about training in something else or making a career change. I'm certainly not going to sit back and moan about it...
As far as I'm concerned, if your skills suddenly become less useful, then you've yourself to blame (for the reasons above) and Microsoft.
As a tax-paying citizen, I do not want to be forced to pay a Microsoft tax purely because my government chooses to distribute important information in a proprietary format - so if the government moves to open formats (not necessarily Open Source), then that maximises the capabilities of citizens to get to that information which can only be a good thing in the long term. Personally, I don't care whether Windows or Linux drives the computers that provide or access that information as long as it is in an open format - but it's Microsoft's pig-headedness in keeping standards closed that is forcing them out of government arenas and possibly the cause of your ultimate expendibility.
If you believe that Open Standards (that anyone, including Microsoft, can help with the definition of) are a bad idea, can I please ask you to now disable the *OPEN* TCP/IP stack on your computer, reconfigure it to use a proprietary standard like NetBEUI for example, and then see if you can connect to Slashdot? Oh, you can't...
From your blinkered Microsoft-only view of the world, it's easy for you to sit back and make these ridiculous comments. However, from my perspective, the Web is about the dissemination of information to *everyone* not just those who can afford to pay for a Microsoft product to do it.
Go off and read the HTML specifications, write a web page to those standards and then view it in Firefox and IE - I bet you'll be hacking up the code for to render it properly in IE, not in Firefox...
Music labels stop making videos and focus on the *quality* content of the audio material.
With the money they save in not paying "moistened bints" to prance around half-naked in front of a camera (or around the singer/group) performing the actual song, they can discount the cost of the CD (which subsidises the making of the videos in the first place) and force the artiste to sell CDs based on quality of musical content, not on how well the video induces wet dreams in the male teenage audience...
Don't get me wrong - I find the female form as interesting as much as every other red-blooded heterosexual monogamous male but if I want visual stimulation, then I'll put on the TV or a DVD, thanks very much.
It's completely independent from other installs if you don't specify "upgrade".
Fine. Then I've learnt something new about XP.
Er, if something in any way leads you to suspect the hard disk is faulty, then reformatting is no better than a no-format reinstall.
I disagree with that statement completely. Why risk getting 99% through an install before finding out the disk is faulty than doing a much quicker format to do the check?
The problem is, just because you told the user to use the D: drive for everything you think it's fine to wipe out C: and then blame him if your action destroys his files.
Whoa there! How did you make THAT leap? Just because I tell a user to use the D: drive for his files does NOT mean I will wipe C: totally willy nilly. It just means that I can reasonably expect most of his files to be on D: but probably still need to double check C: first just to be safe. If anything, I'm a damned good sysadmin for keeping his files separate.
There are advantages for partition support to exist yes (what such books will typically emphasize) and I use them in some situations, but a single-user workstation is not one of them.
Well, you're entitled to your own opinion of course but it all depends on your viewpoint. On a single user workstation running Windows, I ALWAYS partition, especially if I'm expected to look after that machine afterwards. My view is to use NTFS for the C: drive and FAT32 for the D: drive. Okay, not secure for a corporate environment but imagine the C: drive dies and you can't boot the machine. You can walk in with any DOS disk or bootable Linux distro and get to the FAT partition to get files off. (Okay, I may change that strategy once I've confirmed how good the NEW Linux NTFS driver is for reading and writing and make the D: drive NTFS instead!)
Also, please explain the effects of fragmentation. Stick the user's files on the same drive as the OS, they get written to and changed a lot and the OS fragments much more. OK, you'll never stop fragmentation but sticking commonly changing files on a separate partition helps limit it.
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Really.
Partitioning of hard drives has been done for years on UNIX systems, for example - and rather than CAUSING drives to run out of space, it allows you to LIMIT how big your filesystems can actually get.
I also seem to recall, somewhere around Windows 98 days, that even if you deleted your previous version of Windows, when you did a reinstall it would pick up a lot of unwanted settings from your previous installation. Whether or not this is the case with XP, I don't know because I always format anyway. Besides, if your previous installation of Windows was trashed or suffering from some bad file errors, how do you KNOW it wasn't possibly caused by a disk problem? In which case formatting *might* pick this up. So please don't use your laziness as an excuse - it's about being thorough.
(Also, when you have any problem you ghost over the whole drive? Are you crazy? What if the user forgot to back up an important file?)
Why is partitioning relevant to this??? If I've told my user to use a D: drive for all of his files, the chances are that his file is on there anyway and I'm not touching that partition when I reinstall Windows. Also, because I'm dilligent anyway, I check the Document and Settings folder before I reformat the hard disk - that's just careful administration, nothing to do with whether you use Ghost or not.
You'd be well advised spending your time keeping yourself better informed rather than telling everyone else they're talking crap - EVERY BOOK you choose to read on operating systems will explain the ADVANTAGES of partitioning - GO READ SOME OF THEM!!!
It's the same with fixing Windows PCs also and it's not something a book can tell you.
My advice to anyone with a Windows PC is to get it right from the word go. I still cannot believe PC vendors will sell a PC with a 300GB drive in it with just ONE (C:) partition - educate users to use D: and E: drives for their personal programs and files, then when Windows needs to be reinstalled, the process is less painful.
Also keep a recent Ghost image to hand - then if a problem persists more than half-an-hour, just reinstall the whole thing within an additional half hour.
And in the interim, install a virtually automated virus checker like AVG Free, put Spybot and Ad-Aware on, and make Firefox the default browser.
I don't play WoW and have no intention of playing it - I love PC gaming but networked games beyond the occasional LAN party have no interest for me.
But I don't understand why WoW has been singled out. This can apply to any game, for starters - I've sat playing Civilisation or Master of Orion for hours on end, sometimes into the small hours. Games are about mental stimulation and mental stimulation is enjoyable...
Also, if an "addiction" is something habitual you do that stops you leading a "normal" life, interacting with others, etc. then why does nobody treat, say, Olympic athletes as addicts? They're invariably training 8-12 hours a day, obsessive about winning in their chosen sports and don't lead normal home lives as a result. Sounds no different to these so-called "WoW addicts"...
Personally, an "addiction" is something convenient to blame when you really can't be bothered to find the strength to just stop doing whatever it is you believe you are addicted to. I was a smoker for many years and stayed a smoker for as long as I considered myself as having a nicotine addiction. It was only when I took control of what I was doing and decided I just wasn't going to do it any more that I stopped smoking - sure, it was difficult but sheer bloody-mindedness won in the end.
If someone chooses to play WoW 24x7 and live in a dirty house, who cares? It's their choice and as long as they're not mugging old ladies for the cost of a WoW subscription, leave them to it. It's up to the individual to recognise they have a problem first and then call on external help if they need it to fight the problem - not some overpaid journalist with column-space to fill.
Is it just me who is sick and tired of seeing nobodies like this fool elevated to some prophet-like status purely because they happen to have a way with words?
Let's elevate those people who actually achieve something making changes in our society like Linus Torvalds, Thomas Edison, Marie Curie or Tim Berners Lee - hell, we could even put Mr Gates on one of the lower pedestals!
In my day, someone who said something without actually doing anything was known as a hypocrite - and "Personne" Cascio ("jamais" is French for "never" whereas "personne" is French for "nobody" which is more appropriate) is a hypocrite with his oversized head lodged firmly up his rectum.
Couldn't you have chosen a tune with more international notoriety - say "Smoke On The Water" or something like that?
Being a Brit and having just tried that on my phone, I recognise it as "some American ditty the tune of which I recognise but can't put a name to" and now I'm racking my brains trying to remember the title and it's going to stay in my head all evening - i just know it!
Status Quo, whilst being a very popular band in the UK, have never really achieved any international status (if you'll pardon the pun) although they are from the same era as Tull, ELP and Zeppelin.
Had you wanted *really esoteric*, I could have chosen equally internationally obscure British bands from the same period - like Mungo Jerry, Mott The Hoople, The Pink Fairies, The Enid or Atomic Rooster. But had I done that then my joke would have fallen really flat... oh... never mind.
The situation is especially frustrating because challenging the status quo in court has been difficult.
Just you leave those FINE PURVEYORS of three-chord British blues rock out of this, will you???
What's are you going to do next???
Slap a curfew on Jethro Tull??? Handcuff Emerson Lake And Palmer??? Or how about you just dig up Led Zeppelin's deceased drummer, John Bonham, and slap a speeding ticket on him???
The fact that a single item has been manufactured and sold by the millions over thirty years or so should mean that it should automatically be a cheaper product.
Not on *MY* Laura Ashley designer coffee table in my swank penthouse Thames-side London apartment there isn't!!!
Well, maybe if they make it the same shade of off-white as my David Hockney sculpture and make the little Apple logo a bit more silver, I might think about it...
When they release Johnny Depp's latest sequel movie to DVD, won't the movie companies themselves be guilty of spreading piracy? And should we, the consumer, buy pirate DVDs?
Retailers -- who have faced hard times as CD sales have declined in recent years -- have been enthusiastic about the new format.
Ah, right. So it's absolutely nothing to do with the fact that (here in the UK) HMV and Virgin can charge anything up to £17.99 (approximately $30) for some of their single CDs then? Likewise, the fact that record companies/stores price-fix CDs of 30+ year old recordings (say those by The Beatles) at the same (or higher) prices than new releases is irrelevant, is it?
The CD is getting old and tired
No, what you really mean is that the likes of Sony keep making a total "pigs ear" of trying to apply DRM to the open CD format so now you want we consumers to buy all of our music again on a new format that also takes away our "fair use" of the music we buy.
As a retailer I'm going to be holding on desperately for any compelling physical product.
As a consumer, a "compelling physical product" is one which offers good value for money. Perhaps you should consider some price reductions as part of your business strategy?
offer content through a breadth of products to meet consumer needs.
Ah, so consumers *NEED* more restrictive products, do they? Correct me if I'm worng but I don't see too many consumers hammering at the doors of Sony demanding more DRM...
But the capacity of both the CD and DVD sides of DualDiscs is limited compared to normal CDs and DVDs.
Fantastic! So on the *new* format, I can have twice as many Jessica Simpson videos, twice as many out-takes from a bunch of self-indulgent musicians or albums which are twice as long filled with double the amount of boring filler tracks! Brilliant!
Warner is not proposing any generic name for the new format, beyond simply "DVD album".
Can I suggest "Get Our New Audio Disc, Suckers!"? Or GONADS for short?
But there are some stumbling blocks that may discourage consumers from embracing DVD albums.
No shit, Sherlock! And those stumbling blocks are the price, the price and the price.
The DVD album would include "preripped" digital tracks of the entire album
Ah, now I see. So instead of my dowloading free software to rip my CDs myself at an encoding level to what I deem appropriate for my playing device and my listening pleasure, you're going to do it for me, are you? And presumably you'll reflect the fact that you've done this for me in the price of the product also. Wow, life gets better...
Slashdot Mirror
It *REALLY IS* that simple. Period.
I'm not a parent but I've got two neices and a nephew who've been on the Internet for about ten years now (yeah, no jokes about "Isn't it time they went to bed then?") and who rely on their geek uncle to regularly clean/reinstall their PCs. Yep, I've never seen kids accumulate so many damned computer viruses on their PCs but I've been through browser histories, download directories and caches on their machines on several occasions and never seen anything that leads me to conclude they've ever been to "naughty" web sites or ever chatted online to anyone other than other kids. They're pretty much left to their own devices when it comes to Internet use with no parents looking over their shoulders. I'd have to conclude they're pretty sensible.
However, with the youngest nephew and niece just into their teen years, their parents are concerned if they go round to the local convenience store on their own because of the gangs of other kids who are invariably hanging around outside, threatening other kids and even some adults.
My view, therefore, is that this idea that there are gangs of cyberstalking paedophiles on the Internet is utter nonsense. It is a creation designed to instill fear in the general populace such that eventually the populace will expect governments to enforce Internet censorship and monitoring which is ultimately what those in control want.
During my childhood years, I had parents that taught me how to behave in the company of others and who'd give me a belt around the backside if I behaved wrongly to other kids or adults. I can also remember seeing local policemen walking the streets and police cars occasionally just driving around the area.
I wasn't stopped from going anywhere I liked, didn't have a mobile phone but got told what time I had to be home by. I can remember two occasions where me and some friends had to stand up to some kids who were out for a fight, otherwise we'd ignore abusive kids and just walk away.
So perhaps it's worthwhile thinking about the relevance of this Microsoft button - because it absolves the government of having to tell the truth to you, absolves all law enforcement officials of protecting you as a law-abiding citizen and absolves you of your responsibilities as a parent.
Ah, I see you've met my wife then.
..."Help! I think my bank details have been stolen due to another IE security hole" button?
Why do you American programmers consistently bleat on about how you are *entitled* to continue earning big salaries for your work? I work for an American company here in the UK, I'm a consultant/support person who does a little programming and, yes, I'd like my job to be as secure as possible for as long as possible.
But if times change and what I do starts becoming less needed, then it's up to *me* to make some decisions about training in something else or making a career change. I'm certainly not going to sit back and moan about it...
As far as I'm concerned, if your skills suddenly become less useful, then you've yourself to blame (for the reasons above) and Microsoft.
As a tax-paying citizen, I do not want to be forced to pay a Microsoft tax purely because my government chooses to distribute important information in a proprietary format - so if the government moves to open formats (not necessarily Open Source), then that maximises the capabilities of citizens to get to that information which can only be a good thing in the long term. Personally, I don't care whether Windows or Linux drives the computers that provide or access that information as long as it is in an open format - but it's Microsoft's pig-headedness in keeping standards closed that is forcing them out of government arenas and possibly the cause of your ultimate expendibility.
From your blinkered Microsoft-only view of the world, it's easy for you to sit back and make these ridiculous comments. However, from my perspective, the Web is about the dissemination of information to *everyone* not just those who can afford to pay for a Microsoft product to do it.
Go off and read the HTML specifications, write a web page to those standards and then view it in Firefox and IE - I bet you'll be hacking up the code for to render it properly in IE, not in Firefox...
With the money they save in not paying "moistened bints" to prance around half-naked in front of a camera (or around the singer/group) performing the actual song, they can discount the cost of the CD (which subsidises the making of the videos in the first place) and force the artiste to sell CDs based on quality of musical content, not on how well the video induces wet dreams in the male teenage audience...
Don't get me wrong - I find the female form as interesting as much as every other red-blooded heterosexual monogamous male but if I want visual stimulation, then I'll put on the TV or a DVD, thanks very much.
Fine. Then I've learnt something new about XP.
Er, if something in any way leads you to suspect the hard disk is faulty, then reformatting is no better than a no-format reinstall.
I disagree with that statement completely. Why risk getting 99% through an install before finding out the disk is faulty than doing a much quicker format to do the check?
The problem is, just because you told the user to use the D: drive for everything you think it's fine to wipe out C: and then blame him if your action destroys his files.
Whoa there! How did you make THAT leap? Just because I tell a user to use the D: drive for his files does NOT mean I will wipe C: totally willy nilly. It just means that I can reasonably expect most of his files to be on D: but probably still need to double check C: first just to be safe. If anything, I'm a damned good sysadmin for keeping his files separate.
There are advantages for partition support to exist yes (what such books will typically emphasize) and I use them in some situations, but a single-user workstation is not one of them.
Well, you're entitled to your own opinion of course but it all depends on your viewpoint. On a single user workstation running Windows, I ALWAYS partition, especially if I'm expected to look after that machine afterwards. My view is to use NTFS for the C: drive and FAT32 for the D: drive. Okay, not secure for a corporate environment but imagine the C: drive dies and you can't boot the machine. You can walk in with any DOS disk or bootable Linux distro and get to the FAT partition to get files off. (Okay, I may change that strategy once I've confirmed how good the NEW Linux NTFS driver is for reading and writing and make the D: drive NTFS instead!)
Also, please explain the effects of fragmentation. Stick the user's files on the same drive as the OS, they get written to and changed a lot and the OS fragments much more. OK, you'll never stop fragmentation but sticking commonly changing files on a separate partition helps limit it.
Partitioning of hard drives has been done for years on UNIX systems, for example - and rather than CAUSING drives to run out of space, it allows you to LIMIT how big your filesystems can actually get.
I also seem to recall, somewhere around Windows 98 days, that even if you deleted your previous version of Windows, when you did a reinstall it would pick up a lot of unwanted settings from your previous installation. Whether or not this is the case with XP, I don't know because I always format anyway. Besides, if your previous installation of Windows was trashed or suffering from some bad file errors, how do you KNOW it wasn't possibly caused by a disk problem? In which case formatting *might* pick this up. So please don't use your laziness as an excuse - it's about being thorough.
(Also, when you have any problem you ghost over the whole drive? Are you crazy? What if the user forgot to back up an important file?)
Why is partitioning relevant to this??? If I've told my user to use a D: drive for all of his files, the chances are that his file is on there anyway and I'm not touching that partition when I reinstall Windows. Also, because I'm dilligent anyway, I check the Document and Settings folder before I reformat the hard disk - that's just careful administration, nothing to do with whether you use Ghost or not.
You'd be well advised spending your time keeping yourself better informed rather than telling everyone else they're talking crap - EVERY BOOK you choose to read on operating systems will explain the ADVANTAGES of partitioning - GO READ SOME OF THEM!!!
It's the same with fixing Windows PCs also and it's not something a book can tell you.
My advice to anyone with a Windows PC is to get it right from the word go. I still cannot believe PC vendors will sell a PC with a 300GB drive in it with just ONE (C:) partition - educate users to use D: and E: drives for their personal programs and files, then when Windows needs to be reinstalled, the process is less painful.
Also keep a recent Ghost image to hand - then if a problem persists more than half-an-hour, just reinstall the whole thing within an additional half hour.
And in the interim, install a virtually automated virus checker like AVG Free, put Spybot and Ad-Aware on, and make Firefox the default browser.
Hair growing out of the ears and nostrils???
and the unexpected multi-part fart as you climb stairs???
Me too.
But I don't understand why WoW has been singled out. This can apply to any game, for starters - I've sat playing Civilisation or Master of Orion for hours on end, sometimes into the small hours. Games are about mental stimulation and mental stimulation is enjoyable...
Also, if an "addiction" is something habitual you do that stops you leading a "normal" life, interacting with others, etc. then why does nobody treat, say, Olympic athletes as addicts? They're invariably training 8-12 hours a day, obsessive about winning in their chosen sports and don't lead normal home lives as a result. Sounds no different to these so-called "WoW addicts"...
Personally, an "addiction" is something convenient to blame when you really can't be bothered to find the strength to just stop doing whatever it is you believe you are addicted to. I was a smoker for many years and stayed a smoker for as long as I considered myself as having a nicotine addiction. It was only when I took control of what I was doing and decided I just wasn't going to do it any more that I stopped smoking - sure, it was difficult but sheer bloody-mindedness won in the end.
If someone chooses to play WoW 24x7 and live in a dirty house, who cares? It's their choice and as long as they're not mugging old ladies for the cost of a WoW subscription, leave them to it. It's up to the individual to recognise they have a problem first and then call on external help if they need it to fight the problem - not some overpaid journalist with column-space to fill.
Josh Wolf's mother gets stabbed in the street and the attacker is caught on a video camera by someone who refuses to hand over the video tape.
What's Josh going to want to happen THEN?
...how about just throwing SUVs into deep bodies of water? And letting "soccer mums" walk their kids to school...
Is this a good time not to say anything about that "port 119 service" thingy that we geeks are not supposed to ever mention?
Let's elevate those people who actually achieve something making changes in our society like Linus Torvalds, Thomas Edison, Marie Curie or Tim Berners Lee - hell, we could even put Mr Gates on one of the lower pedestals!
In my day, someone who said something without actually doing anything was known as a hypocrite - and "Personne" Cascio ("jamais" is French for "never" whereas "personne" is French for "nobody" which is more appropriate) is a hypocrite with his oversized head lodged firmly up his rectum.
Was that by Deep Purple?
Being a Brit and having just tried that on my phone, I recognise it as "some American ditty the tune of which I recognise but can't put a name to" and now I'm racking my brains trying to remember the title and it's going to stay in my head all evening - i just know it!
Had you wanted *really esoteric*, I could have chosen equally internationally obscure British bands from the same period - like Mungo Jerry, Mott The Hoople, The Pink Fairies, The Enid or Atomic Rooster. But had I done that then my joke would have fallen really flat... oh... never mind.
Just you leave those FINE PURVEYORS of three-chord British blues rock out of this, will you???
What's are you going to do next???
Slap a curfew on Jethro Tull??? Handcuff Emerson Lake And Palmer??? Or how about you just dig up Led Zeppelin's deceased drummer, John Bonham, and slap a speeding ticket on him???
The fact that a single item has been manufactured and sold by the millions over thirty years or so should mean that it should automatically be a cheaper product.
What the hell - it's Friday and I've karma to burn...
Well, maybe if they make it the same shade of off-white as my David Hockney sculpture and make the little Apple logo a bit more silver, I might think about it...
I'll get my coat.
Ah, right. So it's absolutely nothing to do with the fact that (here in the UK) HMV and Virgin can charge anything up to £17.99 (approximately $30) for some of their single CDs then? Likewise, the fact that record companies/stores price-fix CDs of 30+ year old recordings (say those by The Beatles) at the same (or higher) prices than new releases is irrelevant, is it?
The CD is getting old and tired
No, what you really mean is that the likes of Sony keep making a total "pigs ear" of trying to apply DRM to the open CD format so now you want we consumers to buy all of our music again on a new format that also takes away our "fair use" of the music we buy.
As a retailer I'm going to be holding on desperately for any compelling physical product.
As a consumer, a "compelling physical product" is one which offers good value for money. Perhaps you should consider some price reductions as part of your business strategy?
offer content through a breadth of products to meet consumer needs.
Ah, so consumers *NEED* more restrictive products, do they? Correct me if I'm worng but I don't see too many consumers hammering at the doors of Sony demanding more DRM...
But the capacity of both the CD and DVD sides of DualDiscs is limited compared to normal CDs and DVDs.
Fantastic! So on the *new* format, I can have twice as many Jessica Simpson videos, twice as many out-takes from a bunch of self-indulgent musicians or albums which are twice as long filled with double the amount of boring filler tracks! Brilliant!
Warner is not proposing any generic name for the new format, beyond simply "DVD album".
Can I suggest "Get Our New Audio Disc, Suckers!"? Or GONADS for short?
But there are some stumbling blocks that may discourage consumers from embracing DVD albums.
No shit, Sherlock! And those stumbling blocks are the price, the price and the price.
The DVD album would include "preripped" digital tracks of the entire album
Ah, now I see. So instead of my dowloading free software to rip my CDs myself at an encoding level to what I deem appropriate for my playing device and my listening pleasure, you're going to do it for me, are you? And presumably you'll reflect the fact that you've done this for me in the price of the product also. Wow, life gets better...